Saturday, June 7, 2014

Of ants, shrimp, and men

"no vertebrate brain can match the compactness of an ant's, and no vertebrate nerves can match the almost supersonic speed (210 meters per second) of conduction that Kusano et al. have measured in the humble Kuruma shrimp." Oliver Sacks responding to a letter from Stuart J. Edelstein of the École Normale Supérieure, The New York review of books 61, no. 10 (June 5, 2014): 76.